Mack&Crack, Apollo BC an Blue Moby

Here we got 1,5 weeks old (from germination) ladies. Soaking seeds for 24 hours and then paper towel method. I prefer to start in Root Riots. Here a gave only Voodoo, Tarantula and Piranha with pH ed water (5.9 pH). Light is 60 cm away and half-powered. PS it is salad and basil in containers)

Here I have begun to give them 1 ml/liter AN base. First to the right is a newbie (Apollo) They go here like this (left to right): Mack, Blue, Mack, Apollo. Blue is a little slow.

I've started bending the trunks on the Macks sideways, the others are still too small. 2 ml/l base and others according to AN table. PS Try to guess a strain of the fifth one in the center) Later ofc.

3 ml/l. Macks on top, Blue on the bottom left, Apollo on the bottom right. Apollo made me happy with its fast growth rate! Stretching all of them to get star-shaped main trunks and cut few little sprouts. Fimming is wonderful technique, you really have 4 offshoots instead of 2 while topping. Blue continues to behave strangely and grows inwards instead of outwards. Did some pretty extensive defoliation to open up the light to the little sprouts. However, the main trunks are very thick. Hope she will rocket after light schedule change.

Light switched and first serious defoliation made. 4 ml. I removed 40 percent of the foliage and all the small branches below 1/3 of the bush, which according to the experience of the professional growers who consulted me is a pretty modest defoliation. I also removed the humidifier and hung up the filter. Leds 90 % powered and 40 cm away as my goal was to prevent overstretching (during preflower size doubling) through pushing plants down with light. You may also notice my drainage system. It is very important to drain 20-30 percent of the solution after watering to prevent the formation of salts in the substrate. By pouring a 1300 ppm solution I was getting 2500 and even 3200 ppm. These are considered very high rates, although I am following AN's instructions completely and the plants look great, the foliage is healthy green. As AN support team assured me, these values are within the normal range and the main thing is to have water runoff and frequent watering.

As you can see, light squeezing them down didn't work, they got huge enough that I couldn't lift the lamp any higher. I had to lower the pots. The problem with overstretching is that the branches stretch out and become thin (the bud feeding is worse), you lose table shape, outstanding colas are formed. I removed the fan leaves from outstanding colas to slow their growth. But look at Blue Moby! She's hitting the brake pedal frantically! I think it's a genetic flaw and next time I'll be sure to use breeding to at least pick the healthiest of the 4 sprouts.

I've put the plants out of the box so you can better appreciate the size. Notice how quickly they have gained foliage in a week, but that's okay because next week there will be another defoliation to expose the upper and middle bud levels to light. Blue finally popped! According to the condition of the flowers, she is 2 weeks behind her sisters in development. But in her defense, the thickness of the trunks is amazing, so I hope for a good outcome. All her trunks are about the same thickness as the thickest trunks of Macks.

So many growing points and they promise me lots of the prettiest and densest buds. I'm so excited! One of the Mack and Apollo are showing signs of light stress. I reduce the lamps by 10% and move a little farther away. Strangely, the other Mack is doing just fine..... Also the tips of the leaves have started to burn a bit, although I follow the table unquestioningly. I don't really care about that at this stage. My assumption is that the pH perfect technology is lowering the pH too much for calcium and magnesium assimilation (their assimilation threshold is 6.0). I contacted AN support with this question, to which I was told not to worry. I in turn added intermediate watering with increased pH value and added Calmag.

Flowers swell, the flight is normal.